Nintendo's Homebrew-Blocking Update Hacked 157
ElementC writes "Team Twiizers, the group behind almost all of the Wii Homebrew scene, has released an update to the Homebrew Channel (and installer) that allows for installation on a Wii with the most recent update installed. While the team still recommends against installing the Nintendo update, those who accidentally updated or purchase games that require the update are no longer left out to dry. This update to the Homebrew Channel also adds SDHC support, a feature Nintendo has not implemented in vanilla Wiis. The community has also created an app that updates just the Wii Shop Channel — allowing users to purchase Wiiware and Virtual Console games without losing their homebrew. It took the team only two days to get the fix out."
Is this one of those "secret support" things? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like when Nintendo doesn't condone it, but leave little bits of stuff "open" for someone to find and break to keep a scene healthy?
Re:Is this one of those "secret support" things? (Score:4, Interesting)
No. They're writing DRM. You don't have to try to make DRM breakable. They all come that way.
SDHC support? (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest news out of the whole thing for me is that they have added SDHC support through a _channel_ in the Wii dashboard. People have been speculating why the Wii would not support SDHC and if it was some hardware limitation...well, it seems like it isn't. Which really makes me wonder why Nintendo has not added it, yet...in this day and age it's almost getting hard to find a non-SDHC card...
Seriously...WTF. This isn't the first time some 3rd party tool squeezes more functionality out of hardware. But this should really be a no-brainer to implement for the big N.
Re:Don't encourage the crackers... (Score:5, Interesting)
The console is about as cheap as they get, and Nintendo put an incredible amount of research and effort into making the best games in the world. When do you folk feel a bit ethically obliged to let the company just make some money out of the good work they've done.
Nintendo makes about $50 on each Wii, compare that to MS and Sony who lose money whenever a 360 or PS3 is bought. Plus, most homebrewers are exactly that, homebrewers, this isn't a 1337 W@r3z h@ck either, its simply homebrew.
Thirdly Nintendo may not have deliberately broken the previous hacks anyway. All they did was release a new binary and the compiled code moved a bit in memory. I think a little too much credit may be being given here.
Ah, yes, because there was so much else in that update. Oh and never mind the fact that it searched for modified saves and deleted them, that's certainly not intentional.
Re:Don't encourage the crackers... (Score:4, Interesting)
Who said anything about cracked or pirate games? This is about installing homebrew and open source software on a hardware platform which has been paid for by the consumer who bought it - and Nintendo are not selling Wii's at a loss like Sony's PS3.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Not a surprise, really (Score:5, Interesting)
Check this article [thedailywtf.com] to find out why this is not really surprising.
Yup, that is indeed Nintendo featuring on TheDailyWTF.
Re:SDHC support? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:When will they learn??? (Score:2, Interesting)
DRM does not work.
Mathematically speaking.
Door locks do not work. Because it is always somehow possible to bypass them - be it by picking, drilling, bashing the door down or smashing a window.
They do, however, keep honest men from temptation.
Re:SDHC support? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hooray... (Score:3, Interesting)
Pandora? PCs? (Score:3, Interesting)
People don't buy $250 systems just to play homebrew.
No, but they do buy $330 systems just to play homebrew [slashdot.org]. Heck, if you define "homebrew" to mean "software released without a negotiated licensing agreement between the developer and the computer's manufacturer", people buy $300 to $2,000 devices for homebrew, called "personal computers".
Re:When will they learn??? (Score:2, Interesting)
Otto, above, made most of my arguments for me. :-)
With encryption, no one can know what I am passing in the network.
Hell, one can even encrypt and embed (steganographically) others' copyrighted works _inside_ one's copyrighted works (I can make a video with six hours of me sitting on a chair picking my nose and steganographically embed on that video the whole "SpiderMan 2040" feature) Not to mention that false identities will _ever_ exist, and one can distribute (and download!) the works under a false or stolen ID all the time...
But, thank you for playing!